~ Researching Russell Co, Kentucky

Monthly Archives: March 2013

I was able to spend significant time on genealogy research this weekend, so I picked up my Stephens file, but couldn’t think of a new path of attack for my line. So I thought I’d spend some time trying to figure out why William Stephens spent many years in Alabama. As I’ve researched William’s father, Welcome, I could see no reason why William would be in Alabama. I thought it must have something to do with William’s wife, Dorothy Wigginton, who I have done zero research on.

I went to Ancestry to see if I could find Wiggintons near William’s family in the Alabama census records. How could I have never noticed that there was a Wigginton family living next door? And another Wigginton further down the page? I think I’ve been so focused on the Stephens surname and trying to find where they were in 1870 that I never took the time to look around. Rookie mistake! As I began to research these Wiggintons, I found that Ancestry has some very nice plat maps for the area. And that was the beginning of HOURS of researching land records! On Ancestry, I was able to get plat maps and land grant certificates. That reminded me to look at the BLM-GLO web site which helped me decipher that writing on the plat maps and helped me find some additional parcels of land that I hadn’t noticed before.

I was trying to find a map of the entire county with plat lines on it when I came across a GREAT site by the Alabama Secretary of State. The Government Records Inquiry System gives access to great scans of the Tract Books showing everyone who received a land grant within a specific township and range. It was a much easier way to see who the neighbors were than trying to read the tiny writing on the plat map! The site also has books of Field Notes, Land Patents, Deeds and Leases and lots of other books that I have not had time to look at.

This week-end (and today because we had a snow storm that cancelled school) was all about information gathering, and the days ahead will be spent analyzing! I’ve had issues in the past with finding records for 2 different men named William Stephens in the area, so I’m hoping that these records will help me to sort these men out!

I rushed home from school today to jump onto the Live Steaming from RootsTech.org and was thrilled to see that not only is it streaming live, but you can “rewind” to watch anything that’s been streaming for the day!

Ahhhhh…..snow day! Actually, “icy streets” day, but no matter – an unexpected day to work on genealogy! So I thought to myself, I will open my group sheets that are stored on my computer and change all of the citations that only say “Find-a-grave” to be actual, genealogically happy citations. And thus began my citation headache…

I decided to start with a specific group sheet that had all kinds of information for every name on the sheet – births, deaths, spouses, marriage dates, etc, but my citations tended to be things like: 1) ACPL 976.901 R91sh v. 1. or 2) Accd to William’s birth record or 3) Marriage Bonds book 6. CERTAINLY not complete citations! And what about the marriage dates that had no citations at all? Oy vey!

I decided that I would not work on any other group sheet until I entered proper citations for everything on this group sheet.

I began with burial citations since that was my original intention anyway. Because I took a trip to my county of research a few summers ago, I had many of my own images from cemeteries and such, so I cited those first and then moved on to Find-a-grave listings that I had not created myself. I did a Google search to see how others were citing Find-a-grave sites and could not find anything that didn’t refer to getting information from the image of the tombstone. I have quite a few ancestors who are listed in Find-a-grave, but do not have an image of the stone included. I decided on a citation format that was close to what I was seeing online and that would work well for me including linking the person’s name to the Find-a-grave listing so I could continue to check back for images at a later date with just a single click. There are some wonderful volunteers in Russell County who are posting images of obituaries and wedding announcements that have been delightful surprises and I am very grateful for that! I only wish that the name of the newspaper and date of publication were included, but someday, I’ll be able to make a trip to the area and find those myself and I’m thrilled with the information that they do contain.

Next came hours of re-researching. Quite a bit of information that I had came from a web site that no longer exists, so I was looking for print outs or other sites that the information may have been copied to. (Thank you RootsWeb!) If I didn’t already have a print-out, I made one today with the surnames that I research along with any information given on the source that the information had originally come from.

I then went to my Ancestry account to see if I had entered sources in the notes on there. Sadly, there were not many. When information came from microfilms, I searched the FamilySearch catalog to find the films that I had rented in the past to get the information needed for those records. When information came from books, I found the book on the WorldCat site, copied the Chicago style citation and added page numbers if I knew them and red notes to look them up if I didn’t.

Bottom line – I’ve spent 8 hours adding fresh information and working to update citations for ONE group sheet and my backside is pretty sore because I’ve spent every minute of that kicking myself in the rear for not doing this correctly from the beginning! BUT, I now have a group sheet (yes, only one) that is fully cited and I have LEARNED MY LESSON!

I made sure to get all of my work for Monday’s classes done yesterday so that I could have a genealogy afternoon today! But I’ve been in the process of creating a photo album scrapbook for my daughter’s graduation this May, so my genealogy files weren’t in any condition to do traditional research. Instead, I decided to work on creating a database in Excel of all of the Stephens gravestones in Russell County cemeteries. It’s pretty mindless work, so I can also “watch” marathons of my favorite HGTV shows while entering information. To keep from getting TOO overwhelmed with it, I decided to only enter information for people who were born before 1900.

I had a column for name, birth date, death date, parents, spouse and cemetery.

I LOVE creating databases like this in Excel because of the information that I see (REALLY see) for the first time based on sorting the database by columns. For example, when I sort by name, I can see all of the men named Andrew J. Stephens and fill in some of the blanks on the various groups sheets that I have. When I consider the location of the cemetery for each man, it helps me see which locations within the county are most likely to go with each man.

I can sort based on date of death and then see a list of people who died in the time frame in which death certificates are available on Ancestry to see if there are certificates that I haven’t discovered yet.

I can sort based on Parents and an incredibly complete group sheet appears before my eyes because of the links added to family stones and images of obituaries that volunteers have added. Often, I’ll find a spouse or child that I didn’t know about by doing this.

Or I can sort based on the Cemetery and begin to see possibilities for family connections that I didn’t think of before.

This sheet of the database is now part of a Stephens workbook that I’ve been working on over the years. Any time I’m at a standstill in research for one reason or another, I try to take one source – a specific book or website – and add all of the entries that I can whether I know they are related to my line or not. I have solved many puzzles with databases like this one! Now, if I have a date of death on the Cemetery sheet, but no parents, I can check to see if I have information on the Death Records worksheet to see if parents are listed there. I have worksheets for Birth Records, Marriage Records, Deeds, Taxes, Census Records, Military Info, Death Records and now – Cemeteries. And of course, every entry has the source included so I don’t have to go back to the actual book or website to add a record to my software database.

While it isn’t an earth shattering revelation for doing research, I’m always surprised by what I discover even though it was looking me directly in the face before!